


Girl Meets the New Year Redux

by disturbtheuniverse



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22750624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disturbtheuniverse/pseuds/disturbtheuniverse
Summary: josh was originally in the girl meets the new year script, but uriah got injured so he was written out. i wrote him back in. i finished this way before nye but i'm posting it now, happy belated birthday joshua gabriel matthews.
Relationships: Maya Hart/Josh Matthews
Comments: 9
Kudos: 86





	Girl Meets the New Year Redux

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amirmitchell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amirmitchell/gifts).



_Does love make sense?_ She can’t get the question out of her head. Maya thought having a teacher other than Mr. Matthews would make her life easier, that lessons would no longer parallel her own life, but she was sorely mistaken. What did Jane Austen know that she doesn’t? And since when is Riley the logical one? She doesn’t know how she feels about Lucas, not really, because she hasn’t had the time or space to figure that out, not with Riley’s feelings crowding in around the edges. Supposedly, those are gone, now. They dissipated overnight, incredibly, unbelievably quickly. Maya isn’t stupid enough to believe Riley’s story and she isn’t stupid enough to think that Lucas holding her face in Texas meant nothing. She doesn’t know what it did mean, though. There’s a careful line she’s forced to walk, between knowing it means something but not allowing it to mean everything.

And then there’s Josh. Luckily, everyone else seems to have forgotten about Riley’s uncle, even his niece. Which is fine for Maya, even if she’s already confronted those feelings, even if, with Josh, she’s always known exactly what she holds for him in her heart. He’s not here, though, and he’s three years older. And Lucas is here and he’s only one year older. That makes a difference apparently, somehow.

So she has plans for Riley’s party that don’t involve him. She’s going to talk to Lucas, in a non-school setting, in a possibly even romantic setting. At midnight, she’s going to be with him instead of Riley for the first time since they were old enough to stay up that late. And she’ll just have to see what happens after that.

She’s the first one there on New Year’s Eve and she helps Topanga with the punch, but she’s too anxious to be much help beyond that. Riley seems tense, too, though Maya can’t imagine why. She’s too afraid of the answer, anyways, so she doesn’t ask. They both pretend everything is fine and tonight is a perfectly normal evening.

When Lucas gets there, she’s thankful for the strange exchange with Smackle that follows. Maya knows that tonight is about avoiding distractions, about tackling things head on finally, but that doesn’t make her ready.

“Hi,” Lucas says, finally.

“Hi,” she says back.

And that’s it.

Everyone from school seems to already be there by the time there’s a final knock on the door, and she’s sufficiently uncomfortable enough that she’ll take any excuse to answer the door while Riley is in the bathroom.

Her eyes are playing tricks on her, is her first thought.

Josh nervously rubs the back of his neck and offers her a smile.

“Hey, Maya, Happy New Year’s Eve.”

“You, too,” she responds, slowly, slightly dazed. “Um, I didn’t know you were coming.”

He just shrugs, as if no further explanation is necessary. “I didn’t see you guys for Christmas this year, so I figured...”

She doesn’t know what to say. To that, to him, none of it. After a moment of her not speaking or moving aside to let him in, he gently puts a hand on her shoulder to move them both firmly inside. He closes the door behind him and finally Cory sees him. There’s the usual shouted greeting of “my brother!” at one another and then Riley emerges to give him a welcoming hug.

“Riley,” Maya hisses under her breath the second Josh is busy with Auggie. “Why didn’t you tell me Josh was coming?”

“I’m sorry, Maya, I didn’t know.”

It seems...very convenient that Josh is here, or rather, very inconvenient, considering she’s kind of imagined tonight as the night she makes a real attempt at starting something with Lucas. She doesn’t put as much stock in it as Farkle, who claims that it sets the tone for the next year. A whole year of Lucas had sounded...slightly intimidating and scary but in a thrilling kind of way. The idea of a year with Josh immediately fills her with a sense of calm, like maybe they’ll finally be on the same page, especially since next year also marks her transition to high school. They’ll be equals in a way they never have before.

“Okay,” Maya says after a beat, grounding herself. She flashes her best friend a smile. “Of course you didn’t. I know you would have said something.”

When Riley leaves to go talk to Charlie, Maya isn’t sure what to do. She looks at Lucas but his eyes are following Riley’s every move and Josh is studying the Christmas tree just to avoid making conversation with a bunch of eighth graders.

Somehow, she and Josh both find themselves looking at the board games. Her face is burning when she sees the Family Game, when she turns and sees Josh looking at it, too, how she promised him the long game and it already feels like such a long time ago when, really, it was last year and somehow her following him to NYU had changed everything and nothing at the same time.

“Look,” Josh says, his hand darting past her to grab at something. She almost closes her eyes in case he grabs what she thinks he will, but instead, he holds up Twister. “We should play this.” And when he says it, he’s looking right at her. He grins and she isn’t sure if he’s joking or being suggestive or what she’s supposed to think.

Cory reaches out to grab it from his brother’s grasp. “No Twister!”

Then Charlie is there and all he has to say is, “The Couples Game, please,” for Maya to feel an entirely new sense of dread wash over her.

The terror continues as Riley walks over and asks what game he has and Lucas practically yells “What is it?” from across the room and it’s with a great deal of reluctance that she sits next to Lucas.

Josh, of course, is not playing, because he can’t be a couple with a fourteen year-old. They all know this very well. Thankfully he doesn’t say this, but he does sit on the arm of the couch next to Maya. “This is gonna be _fun_ ,” he says, a little too excitedly, and Maya honestly hopes he’s right.

He’s not right, naturally. The cards are way too pointed and Lucas is acting like he’s Riley’s boyfriend the entire first round and even Josh can feel it, by the look on his face, the way his eyes dart back and forth between the two of them. When Lucas literally eats one of the cards, Maya is pretty sure it’s time to give up but she pushes down her reservations and taunts Lucas instead.

“Huckleberry, it's just a game.” She leans forward to grab a card, reading it aloud without reading it in her head first. “‘Is it possible to love two people at the same time?’”

Her gaze lands on Lucas but she doesn’t look at Josh, because it would require craning her neck and being much too obvious, but she can feel him right next to her and she does the only thing she can think of. She shoves the card in her mouth, following the action with a half-hearted “yum.”

Thankfully, Smackle and Farkle are a reliable detour into weird-land where she can pretend not to notice Josh shift and brush her shoulder in the process and how Lucas’s gaze keeps drifting over to her best friend.

But it doesn’t last. Riley pulls a card about keeping secrets and immediately calls game over. Maya, as the person who knows everything about Riley, is immediately suspicious of this reaction, but mostly she’s thinking about all of the secrets she’s been keeping herself. Maybe neither of them are perfect.

When everyone else leaves for the roof, Maya stays behind. Josh, does, too, and takes Lucas’s spot on the couch. Neither of them speak as they listen to Cory and Topanga talk about the state of the apartment, how un-messy it is despite the gaggle of teenagers who has been there all night.

“I'm a mess. Who's gonna clean me up?” Maya jokes, mostly she jokes, mostly to herself.

“What's the matter, honey?” Josh asks, his tone trying to sound non-committal.

Her pulse quickens at the term of endearment. “I'm a little confused.” She’s using a baby voice she’s never used around him, or anyone, really, but he doesn’t comment. “I think your brother was right again.”

“Yeah, probably. He has that tendency. What about?”

“How easy it is to get torn apart by feelings you don't understand.”

She puts her head on his shoulder, not even questioning whether it’s the right move or not. Where Lucas has always been a question mark in her mind, there’s never been any doubt about Josh. It’s stupid – she doesn’t even know his life, whether she’s in a triangle with him, too, and doesn’t even know it. But he just runs a hand through her hair before resting it on her shoulder to pull her closer and, no, Joshua Matthews wouldn’t treat her like this if he had something with anybody else.

“It's gonna be a tough year, isn't it?” She asks, though sitting with him, she feels like it’s not going to be so bad.

“I hope not,” he says and when she tilts her head to look at him, he’s looking at her, too. “But no matter what happens, you’re tough, too. I don’t know much about what’s been going on with you, but...I wouldn’t mind hearing about it. If you ever need someone to talk to.”

Not for the first time that evening, he’s left her speechless with the power of surprise, but she smiles and nestles in closer. She has no idea what’s changed or if he means it. She just wants to live in this moment a little longer. “Thanks, Josh.”

“I think we better join the others,” he says after a long moment of silence. “It’d suck if we miss the fireworks.”

She hasn’t even been thinking about midnight. Midnight. She hears Charlie’s voice saying “what'll be interesting is who's with who at midnight.” Maya had planned, hoped even, to be with Lucas. To start off the new year with a resolution of making them work, or at least giving them a decent shot at trying. But now there’s Josh.

And he’s standing from the couch, grabbing her hand in the process, and he’s still holding her hand all the way up the stairwell to the rooftop. He drops it before opening the door and she sees all of her friends and classmates and thinks about how much easier her life would be if they were all gone and it was just her and Josh on that roof.

Maya pulls her phone out of her coat pocket and sees 11:57pm. She’d kind of hoped they had missed midnight without noticing, somehow. She doesn’t want to make a decision.

Josh, oblivious to all of this and probably thinking nothing of who’s with who at midnight, doesn’t leave her side and eventually they both walk to the rooftop’s edge, taking up the corner opposite Lucas. Maya can’t help but notice that Riley isn’t with him, even though it seems like that’s what he wants. And Charlie isn’t with Riley but Auggie instead. And she is looking at Josh Matthews as he looks out at the New York City skyline.

“It’s a hell of a view,” he says, then turns to look at her. “Sometimes I forget how beautiful it is.”

He’s talking about the city.

He’s talking about her.

He’s still looking at her and it’s the way he’s looking at her that convinces her that he isn’t talking about the city at all.

“Oh,” she breathes out, her breath visible in the chilly night air. Right, it’s cold. She hasn’t even noticed.

“I don’t know much about what’s been going on here,” he says again, a little differently this time. “But I get the feeling it matters a lot to you.”

“It’s supposed to,” she says before she even knows she will say it. “Everyone else is putting so much importance on these relationships and feelings that nobody really understands. And I’m just like them, except...when I’m not.” Thank god for the cold and the way it naturally makes her face flush so maybe he can’t tell the difference. “There’s only been one person I’ve ever been sure about, and...I’ve been forcing myself to forget about him, because I know it’s just like that other thing. He doesn’t feel what I feel.”

“Maya...” He says, so quietly she knows nobody else hears it, as he inches closer to her. Her hand is resting on the rooftop edge and as he approaches, his hand skims atop the snow before his fingers brush against hers. “You’re special, you know that? You’re not like other people, you never second-guess your feelings or keep yourself from feeling them. I wish I was more like you.”

“Why?” She asks, because it’s what she really, really wants to ask, and she doesn’t want to miss what feels like a chance that will never come again.

“Because...”

When he says it, the warmth of his breath brushes her face, and his eyes are on her mouth and he’s leaning in and someone is counting down “3...2...”

And just before he can kiss her, Farkle’s voice rings out across the night sky.

“Riley still loves Lucas!”

Josh is the one who pulls away, jumping back as if he’s been burned.

Shit.

The rest of their classmates disperse, but not Josh. At least he’s still next to her.

“It's midnight,” she says, her heart still beating like crazy in her chest, just to break up the silence.

“Here we are,” Riley says.

Maya looks at Josh. _Here we are_. But he’s looking out at the city, the light from the fireworks playing across his face.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in a rush for a friend and i could have made it better before posting it but i did not and will not ty!


End file.
